Helping build the next generation of collaborative international bat researchers!

GBatNet’s student and early career scholars from around the world, including Ashraf and Abby, gathered in Tempe, Arizona, for our first-ever in-person student-only workshop on developing multidisciplinary, international research collaborations. Part of PI Tigga Kingston’s broader Global Union of Bat Diversity Networks, these students and recent grads were mentored in grant writing and project development by co-PIs Nancy Simmons and Susan Tsang, and former lab member Iroro Tanshi. Three very full days and a fantastic field trip to catch bats at a Macrotis californicus roost later (thank you Arizona Department of Fish and Game!), everyone walked away having written four collaborative grant proposals.

We look forward to seeing where these projects go!

Tigga at the SEABCRU Flying Fox Workshop in Cambodia

Tigga spent the last couple of weeks in Cambodia for the SEABCRU Flying Fox Workshop 2013. We started off with a meeting of the Flying Fox Team (Tammy Mildenstein, Sara Bumrungsri, Paul Racey, Kevin Olival, CE Nuevo and Sheema Abdul Aziz) to catch up on some of their writing commitments — which they are doing an awesome job on. Then we prepared for and moved into the SEABCRU Flying Fox workshop, with participants from Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand. The workshop went even better than I could have hoped, and we have made some great new connections for the SEABCRU in Cambodia and southern Vietnam, and got great press coverage in the Cambodian Daily and Phnom Penh Post. More details about the workshop here and here . Thanks to Neil Furey (from the SEABCRU cave team) and Sophany and Sarak at RUPP for being such excellent hosts!.

One, two, mobs (as they'd say in Oz). Part of the workshop focused on counting flying foxes like these Pteropus lylei

One, two, mobs (as they’d say in Oz). Part of the workshop focused on methods for estimating flying fox colony sizes. These are Pteropus lylei